Submission to Red Dot Award: Product Design 2015 Is Now Open

The registration phase for Red Dot Award: Product Design 2015 has just begun.

The award, which was established in 1955, is today recognised throughout the globe as the hallmark of good design. Its significance is defined by its credibility. Features include clear criteria for granting an award, respected and independent jury members as well as a uniform and well-considered presentation of the original products.

The winning products are displayed in the Red Dot Design Museums, in an online presentation and in the Red Dot Design Yearbook. In their own communication and marketing, manufacturers and designers have also long used the distinctive “Red Dot: Best of the Best” and “Red Dot Winner” labels to set themselves, and their products, apart from their competitors. Notably, the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2015 is an inclusive award that is open to global brands and established names in the world of design, as well as to small and medium-sized companies and young talents.

The number of individual product groups has increased to 31 in response to the growing number of participants and product diversity. For example, there are now new categories for “Materials and surfaces”, “Watches” and “Bicycle and bicycle accessories”. Depending on the specialist area, Red Dot invites specialised design experts as jury members.

To avoid any conflict of interest and to ensure maximum fairness and non-bias, none of the jury members are permitted to assess any products that he or she has personally been involved in. In addition, the rule for the Red Dot Award has always been that the jury members are only accepted if they are not employed by an industrial firm in the manufacturing sector: None of the roughly 40 product design experts should assess his/her own performance or that of competing brands. “That actually goes without saying”, explains Red Dot founder Prof. Dr. Peter Zec. “But the Red Dot Award is the only major international design competition that has set and consistently adhered to these strict rules for decades.”

At the Red Dot Gala on 29 June 2015, the winners of the top individual award, the Red Dot: Best of the Best, will be honoured in the Aalto Theater in Essen, Germany. Each year, the event is attended by more than 1,200 top international guests from design agencies, corporate brands and the media. At the same time, the four-week winners’ exhibition “Design on Stage – Winners Red Dot Award: Product Design 2015” opens in the Red Dot Design Museum Essen. The exhibition presents new, award-winning design achievements to tens of thousands of visitors in the midst of the historical industrial architecture of the UNESCO world heritage site of the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex.